For all you GMs out there - where did you learn how to GM? What sort of style did you start with? Did you have to start from scratch on your own, or did you have some GM's in the past to look back to and learn from how they did things?
I learned by playing in a ton of shit games, and making a conscious choice to not do any of the things all the shit DMs out there did that made their games terrible.
I assume you're not used to self-criticism and standards, so that probably won't work for you.
>>45803949
I was just asking since I'm curious how GMs learn the specific style of DMing they use. I'm not asking for advice.
I learned out of necessity, by looking at how other people did their games on /tg/ and elsewhere. I used a starter set adventure to get a gist for it, too.
Before I GM'd I had only been to a handful of games in high school and barely remembered them.
I'm not sure if I have a style, but I prefer to have a fun story that leads the players to build up in character and making significant changes. So I guess roleplaying is what I care about the most, with combat here and there for some hot sweaty action. I dig storytelling, but I hope for the players to make choices of their own, not just hopping in my train as if going on a tour.
>>45804407
>>45803949
You'll find its most reactive reductive; gms making a conscious effort to emulate the good games theyve had, while cutting away any negative habits they're conscious of. Not something they shape like clay, more like carving with water.
Played with friends at school. Kinda knew the rules form Neverwinter Nights, and knew enough to know our DM was really bad, so I stepped up, and must have done a better job, because no-one's kicked me out yet.
Played for about half a year as a player then got a chance to DM a few sessions so our forever DM could take a break. Pretty much just emulated his style at first but then I started to branch out a bit more. I used the improv skills I learned in high school drama classes and made social interactions more important, especially since I'm pretty good at doing voices.
>>45804587
What do you do if a group has different expectations? Say, if they do want a lot of combat? Or worse, if some of them want a lot of combat, while the others enjoy roleplay?
>>45806675
I obviously compromise for the sake of their fun. My style is like this because I've been going with a group that has been liking what I prioritize, if someone else would join and wants more combat I'd make sure he gets to have fun too
I learned everything off discussions on /tg/. I started with D&D 4e, and I watched every discussion on it to know what to do and what not to do. I always knew I preferred high action and couldn't do political intrigues for shit, so I cut out the boring stuff and focused on what I was good at. I still had a lot of questions and doubts, and I ended up asking a lot from the one person I knew new everything -Touhoufag, before he went off the deep end.It was quite helpful and I really learned a lot. As games went on, and I switched to the 40k RPGs, it's just been a refinement of, and eventual return of, my style.
Of course, healthy amounts of giant robots help too.
>>45803868
Don't be "that" GM.
Try to avoid homebrewing a lot. Homebrewing just leads to imbalances, and strongly favors powergamers and minmaxing.
Keep your setting consistent, you don't really need a plan, just a consistent world to work with. Keep the characters informed. If there is an every day thing that the average person would notice going on in front of them, don't be a retard and make them check for it. That is nit picky and not a good way to play. It impedes progress.
Strongly enforce spell casting rules. Failure to properly research and enforce spellcasting rules will give powergamers free reign.
Character audit any retard with intentions to betray the group for no reason.
Character audit anyone specifically seeking power.
Character audit that 1 evil guy in the group of goods.
Character audit anyone who misunderstands the concept of suggestion and how hypnotism works. Which edition is irrelevant.
>>45806833
Again, no offense, I'm not really asking for advice, though your advice is useful. I'm just curious about if GM's feel like there's an obvious starting point for where they started learning, or if they've changed or improved over the years, not what should I do to be a good GM myself.
That said, I would have figured homebrewing would be a great way for experienced DMs to leave powergamers on the wrong foot.
>>45807214
Homebrewing strongly depends on the GM to be experienced enough to know when something wounds awry. Otherwise, an inexperience GM may end up with a minmaxing retard ruining the experience until put in their place.
Learning as GM primarily comes from playing with shitty ones who permit dumb, tacky, way overdone stuff like seeking power as a background, and inevitable group betrayal from the start for no apparent reason.
I'm still not what I'd call a great GM, I've got a long way to go. At first I over planned and tried to design a plot. Then if things went off the rails I floundered or the session would run really short. At the end of every session I then write all the things I felt I did wrong and that I should work on for next time.
Over a vast multitude of sessions I started becoming more and more flexible and planning less plot. I stopped making character sheets for NPCs and started just writing dot points on their important qualities if they were important to the plot.
I started to move away from detailed battle maps and instead I got a white board and would do some rough drawings of the situation and work from there. I started to work on background music and sounds for sessions to help immersion. I got players to be efficient in parts of the game where it could get time intensive like combat.
I slowly have gotten more and more familiar with my players characters and get them to work on them in a group at the start of a campaign in the order of character concept, relation to other characters and finally stats.
I went from trying to teach players things by having things happen in game to talking to people like an adult.
This said I still forget rules, have sessions run over or under time, have some sessions not have much in the way of challenges or lack decent roleplaying opportunities.
This said my players seem to be happy with me, even if it's only because I'm not too shit to leave or they're too lazy to do it themselves.
>>45803868
>where did you learn how to GM?
I really didn't, my third session ever was as a GM. Pretty much pulled hard on my long childhood of daydreaming. It actually worked out well because that's still one of the sessions that gets brought up positively in stories from our game group years later.
>What sort of style did you start with?
Some effort into playing the part, partially GM'd by prompting people for stuff in character as an NPC. Still proud of starting my first session by dressing up in a heavy leather coat and oilskin hat (thanks army surplus) and dumping water on myself and coming out of the restroom in character
Now I'm way lazier on doing voices/costumes, but I'm much better at improvising everything else so, eh.
> Did you have to start from scratch on your own, or did you have some GM's in the past to look back to and learn from how they did things?
No past games really, but there was another experienced GM in the group I brainstormed with all the time.
>>45806822
>Touhoufag, before he went off the deep end.
Deep end? Isn't he still around?
>>45809507
He's known as Collette now. He plays half-fae catboys.
Let's see.
After years of playing D&D video games I finally got to play the real thing only to find myself in the most chicken shit, murderhobo, games imaginable.
Some highlights: A player who tried to punch a random dungeon wall in order to make a hole big enough to hide himself, NPCs from IRL pulled in constantly as a joke, players mowing down zombies with a giant dick that sprayed sperm, one of our two DMs (you read correctly) raged and made rocks fall and killed all players.
So naturally I made a mental checklist of improvements. At first I was kind of railroady and had way too much combat, however this time the GM actually planned sessions ahead and tried to keep it serious. Eventually I got better as a GM allowing people to roleplay more, making their choices matter, and making stories that were connected to the PCs.
However this led me becoming a cuck of a GM who avoids railroading like it's the plague, and goes way too far to allow any playstyle the players choose (regardless of the story). Of course this led to the game crashing, due abusive players, and me getting a case of GM burnout. I also found out that players are retarded when given high-levels of freedom.
There are still long ways to go. There might be a decent GM in me buried somewhere if I find a balance between a railroading dictator and a sandboxy hippie.
>>45803949
You certainly come on fast with the insults. Why so salty, anon?
>>45810595
Because fuck you, that's why.
>>45803868
From chat- and forum-based RPs. Tabletop games with any kind of story focus are really just those with mechanics to prevent retards from making shit up. It still requires all the skill of a GM - actually, I think running a forum RP is way harder than GMing because when you're GMing a game you at least have a rule book to lend weight and mechanics or dice to justify when you make a decision or adjudicate how an action results. A forum RP is entirely social, requiring all the skills, flexibility, and planning of GMing but also the ability to firmly tell someone no just because their idea is retarded or hurtful to the game as a whole rather than because the rules don't allow it, which is something a lot of GMs struggle with.
In hindsight, I always found GMing rather easy.
>>45810639
I just don't get how angry someone has to be in life to go into a thread just to insult people for no reason. I don't even see an actual critique of OP's question, just a random insult for no reason. Who does that? Genuinely curious.
Some people just want to watch the world cringe and say "gosh what an asshole."
>>45810639
Watch out boys, we've got an edgy one on our hands.
Stay back or you'll trigger him.
>>45810645
Forum RPs dragged on me after a while. They tend to slow down the action a lot, and where around the table you could ask questions and get quick clarification, in forum RPs you gotta wait for the next post. Chat's better, but it just gets messy.
And I don't feel like either one really prepares you for a tabletop group, because forum RPers are probably flitting in and out of various threads and stories, and everything is entirely text based with no real worry of balance.
>>45810654
Because it's distant? I reckon a lot of people have that anger in them, but this format of communication means that there is no consequence, so there is nothing holding them back.
I learnt by asking tg somethings and having a really friendly reasonable group. Its pretty hard to be a that gm since you have to be unreasonable kind of person
I start tomorrow as a DM
Been a PC for a long time.
Taking over for my forever DM friend.
It's sink or swim time friends.
>>45812598
more like swimming badly or well. There's no sinking option other than the extremest cases.
>>45812607
Sink is a bad time swim is a good time.
Pretty obvious.
Deep end of the pool. Nobody wanted to GM so I had to be the one to do it.
>>45803868
All the GMs I played under in my early years with absolutely horrible. In fact, most of the GMs I've played under have been bad to mediocre, so I've learned a lot from other GMs, but it's mostly been things not to do. Other than trial and error, there have been three different sources that have influenced me a lot.
The first was Spoony, who I had been a fan of from before, but about the time I started GMing he started his Counter Monkey series. I picked up a lot of tips and ideas from him, and also got a sense of the type of games I wanted to run, with evolving narratives and player input on story. This is still probably my favorite of his videos, describing a type of campaign I've often tried to emulate in terms of growth and player investment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKgmhmEtgx4
The second was a podcast called THACO. A lot of their episodes were helpful to me, listening to experienced gamers discuss systems, mechanics, settings, game aides, play styles, how games should run, how stories should evolve, and how players and GMs should work together. This is their site: http://www.thacopodcast.com/
And the most recent has been Bruce Willakers and the URealms stream. They are very entertaining, by far the best actual play type gaming thing I've seen, but I've also improved quite a bit since I started watching their stuff. I've learned a lot about tone and rapport with players, and how to build and maintain the mood that I enjoy at a table, a combination of roleplay and comedy. I've also become more loose and confident in roleplaying NPCs from watching this guy do it. He also does behind the scenes episodes where he discusses preparation, design, and improv. They have an animated intro to their videos if anyone's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12HkbKRCDxw
I think the most important things are to keep trying, keep learning, admit your mistakes, and try to stay focused on having fun.
>>45812625
Sup, me.
>>45803868
I learned by getting a long-time GM to run 2 games with my group and I, then have me piggyback off the story he started.
The story was an incoherent mess that introduced 1st level characters to the concept of dragons, and while I learned the rules fine I had to clean up what he'd left me with. All and all a good learning experience.
>>45803949
>I learned by playing in a ton of shit games, and making a conscious choice to not do any of the things all the shit DMs out there did that made their games terrible.
Basically this. Not that my games are perfect. Far from it. But it's those things that I specifically set out to avoid when I started GMing. Though in retrospect, the main thing that's stuck to me from back then is a strong dislike of flaking and cancelled sessions.
>>45812598
Good luck. You're doing a good thing.
>>45804407
For me, I'd like to think my motivation is in making something great instead of fearing fucking up...
I can't say the latter isn't always in my mind from perfectionistic impulses.
I'm still learning to manage my time and to be inclusive for all the players, which I think is one of the more important things to consider (and easier to do with less people).
>>45815933
>For me, I'd like to think my motivation is in making something great instead of fearing fucking up...
Sounds like the right way to do it. I'd still advise keeping 'mistakes you've seen and don't want to repeat' in your mind though.
>>45803868
>where did you learn how to GM?
By literally being the one in the group chosen to be the GM at a young age.
>What sort of style did you start with?
Crawlers.
>Did you have to start from scratch on your own, or did you have some GM's in the past to look back to and learn from how they did things?
From scratch. I did however become inspired by series such as Wizardry, Might & Magic, gold box games (etc) at a young age.
>>45803868
>For all you GMs out there - where did you learn how to GM? What sort of style did you start with? Did you have to start from scratch on your own, or did you have some GM's in the past to look back to and learn from how they did things?
I learned from listening to podcasts. Primarily Roleplaying Public Radio.
